People always tell you the sky’s the limit. I’m starting to think that notion is pretty terrifying. Dreaming is fun, but every once in a while you realize your dreams have remained dreams for too long.
That’s where I am now.
Truman Capote said:
“It’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.”
I get that now. Who knew a romance like Breakfast at Tiffany’s had so much relevant truth?
Sometimes I wonder if “reaching for the sky” is just a ploy to convince us to work diligently with false hope.
You know, like one of those pyramid business schemes.
It’s like an info commercial is narrating my life. “Keep going”, it says. “Don’t give up, that’s right… sell another. Invest all of your savings. Go ahead, DIVE IN! THE PINK CADILLAC LEVEL IS NEAR.”
But you never reach the top of the stupid pyramid. Instead, you’re lost somewhere amongst the steep steps to success.
The only thing that makes this track feel differently, is that I actually believe in it.
The only faith I have is knowing that reaching towards something is more fun than having no aspirations. Maybe there will never be a day when they stop being dreams. Maybe I’ll live a life constantly wanting more – like the wild things Capote talked about.
But I don’t mind being a wild thing.
Living in the emptiness of the sky is rough. Still, I’d rather know what the sky feels like. I’d rather go through the failures, the pain, the feeling of complete loneliness than live a life thinking the sky was different.
Chasing after what I want hasn’t been what I wanted. I’ve wanted to give up everyday. I’ve felt inadequate, I’ve felt like a shitty writer, I thought I had no vision… the list is endless.
But I still value all of those feelings.
I value wanting to give up, because it makes the not giving up feel even wilder.
I’m sure you’ve heard naysayers explain that everyone in NYC is out to get their “piece of the pie”. I bet you’ve heard New Yorkers are always tired because they’ve been climbing their way up the corporate latter, or that we value money and status over family. You’ve probably heard the young people in Brooklyn are all wannabes, and that we have an unrealistic view on the real world. And I’m 99% certain someone told you everyone in Manhattan is living off daddy’s dime.
Lately I’ve been attempting to study for the GRE. Some days I clock significant study time, other days I make 40% on the question sets and decide to devote my life to critiquing myself and everything I suck at.
Yesterday that critiquing came in the form of this photo:
I’m a dancer by nature. And by dancer, I mean I’m a master at the white girl clap and flaring my arms about with occasional drop it like it’s hot moments. When the music is perfect my body can’t resist the shoulder pops and fishing reel.
I think that’s the aftermath of being a cheerleader/Cotten girl for most of my #lyfe.
In the excitement of the night I forget the world can see me act a fool, but the following days carry an imminent showcase of that dancingmoment in a more public light. A light without jazzy tempos and bass drops. A light with lots of flaws captured in a photo and readily available for the Triple Zoom Test that my favorite #synergy girls taught me.
The Triple Zoom Test determines if any given photo is worthy of social media sharing. It has become our new standard. We zoom in three times, as you may have guessed, and assess the damage. Many times, the Trip Zoom leaves an image marred in my memory for days.
ie:
The resemblance, y’all. I can’t stop laughing.
The Trip Zoom is something to fear. I’m talking scarier than the G train after midnight.
At first I loved the photo of me dancing, and thought it perfectly showcased the night of my sister’s wedding. I was in Louisiana with my entire family in one room, endless whiskey, and a killer band. In that moment life was good. Really, really good.
When I saw the photo on the wedding site I instantly saved it. I went to Insta with intentions to post, but first tried out the trip zoom test. It failed (obvi), and I refrained from posting it.
Later that day I tried to pinpoint when I became such a diva. I’m not J. Law. My flaws aren’t cute, but they don’t matter. No one is triple zooming me but ME.
I hate that we (when I say we I mean me) let impossible standards become a new norm. I constantly talk about how little I care about what others think, and how we should all be ourselves – then my actions don’t match up. It’s like I know what I should be doing, but I can’t get my act together. So, here’s to showcasing the flaws along with the beauty. Here’s to selfies that people will actually recognize as you – not some wannabe, insta famous girl.
I’m not usually one for reviews, but after the concert I just watched – I feel like the world should know a few things.
First – Alexander Ebert is a musical raconteur. Everything from the effortless open, to the walk through the crowd, to the Total Request Live style playlist, to the New Orleans vibe second line farewell made me (and the entire crowd in Prospect Park) fawn over him. I went wanting to dance; I left wanting to be his best friend.
Alex Ebert
Many of the recent concerts I’ve attended have been filled with far too much production, but not Edward Sharpe. The show didn’t feel as though I was watching a marketing ploy, or witnessing a hipster trend. It felt as though I was meeting someone, and that someone just happened to be a musical genius. I enjoy an eclectic mix of music, so I’ve seen a strange array of shows (ie: rap, punk, pop, jazz, indie… the list goes on). I’m a sucker for a full band and packed stage – so there’s rarely a show I don’t enjoy. However, there are very few I leave thinking:
HOW? HOW?! ARE THEY EVEN HUMAN?
Paolo Nutini and Radiohead were my standing favs, but Alex just pushed his sexy, hair-bunned self somewhere on the top.
From the start, I could tell this show was going to be more like a jam sesh in a friend’s basement – and I was totally down. The show seemed to gradually bloom into activeness. There was no announcement, no crazy chanting, not even a burst from the side curtain. The band just simply wandered out on stage. Nothing was hurried, there were no feelings of agendas or time restraints. It just flowed. For a while, I wasn’t even sure Alex was on stage. I thought I saw his infamous white jacket swinging about, but the fumes from the girl’s Mary Jane in front of me made me worried I had things confused.
The show, while obviously deserving full attention on the band and lead, seemed to focus more on the group and experience as a whole. Throughout the entire show, I felt as though I was VIP. The camera for the JumboTron in the backdrop was positioned from the back of the stage, and showed the crowd through a distorted fish lens that looked as though it was filter with the Lark Insta setting (my go to). It was as if we were watching the show through the band’s eyes – like we got to be a more significant aspect than the typical singer vs. crowd set. At one point, Alex sat on the corner of the stage and let other band members perform songs from their personal collections. He asked the lighting crew to turn the spot light off, and coolly mentioned that this show “wasn’t about him”. The reaction from the crowd must have made him question his significance, as he quickly followed with a laugh and hesitated, “Well, I guess it is.”
Still, despite the realization that Alex Ebert is the real focus, the entire show felt like it was about us – the crowd. He did some typical crowd interactions like grabbing cameras for selfies, but even that wasn’t on the same basic bitch level as most concerts. After a few hand shakes, sing-a-longs, open mic moments and selfies, Alex did the unthinkable. At least for my mind. He jump off the stage and made his way to the very back rows. I was seated somewhere near the front – so I was instantly frustrated with my luck of seats. But Alex didn’t disappoint. He followed through the crowd – stopping to let us all gaze into those baby blues while we planned a life with serenades and dope baby names like Harriet and Margot.
That could have been my own, personal take on the crowd walk experience.
When he made it back on stage, I thought my heart would explode from the perfection of the night. He continued the show, stating that he wished he had more time to play. However, the city wouldn’t allow the music past 10:30 pm.
So Foot Looseof you, NYC.
In an effort to squeeze all possible entertainment in, Alex began taking request for songs and playing snip-its of each.
This is where the magic happened.
Fans first requested Lets Get High. The band began playing the first verse and chorus, then asked for more request in hopes to play as many bits as possible. Someone requested Brother, and I must admit I was initially frustrated, as the song was not one of my personal favorites. However, Alex shared the background story to the song – expressing how it was about a friend who led them to NYC and died shortly after. His reminiscing shed light onto another facet into the complexity of the band, and showcased yet again that he can capture a crowd with more than just music.
As mentioned earlier, he is a raconteur on all levels. Brother, easily became my favorite performance of the night. It’s also currently tying with Truth for my favorite song in general.
Finally, (thank god) someone requested Home, and the little basic bitch fan girl in me was jumping with joy. The crowd was instructed to sing the intro, then Alex asked the audience if they had stories to share. MY HEART WAS OVERFLOWING. I love other people’s stories. He walked around passing the microphone as fans shared the various stories that brought them to NYC, to Prospect Park and to our night together. Some explained that it was their birthdays, or that the songs brought relationships back together. Two guys even popped marriage proposals. I felt like I was living in a weird sitcom/movie mix of Friends and Wes Anderson.
As if that wasn’t enough, the band closed out the whole show with a killer second line that felt wildly reminiscent of my home town.
Not to mention, the second line send off was a nice deviation from typical encores and endless chanting into the dark abyss. This felt real. It felt like no one wanted to say goodbye, but the goodbye was too beautiful not to experience.
Thanks for making all my fan girl dreams come true.
Listen, first you should all know I try with my whole being not to like Mumford and Sons.
But this song, y’all… I can’t stop.
Now, for something totally unrelated to Mumford –
Recently, I read this beautiful piece about writing what you know. Writing about the pain and the joy… and the stuff you think no one gets. I’ve always hated people who sugar coat the truth – or people who sugar coat their writing (ie: Elizabeth Gilbert’s first chapter in Eat Pray Love), but writing what you know means you have to write about the real stuff.
And the real stuff gets personal.
For the most part, I think people know a lot about me. I share way too many short sentence thoughts on twitter and FB, I share too many opinions on this Southern Wild blog, and I post a thousand photos of daily, mediocre life on snap chat. But I feel like there is still a large aspect of me that I keep secret.
Someone recently made a very sweet effort in telling me how inspiring my posts were, and they noted that they were “envious” of my happy outlook on life. That was incredibly sweet, and nice to think about, but it made me feel like a total fraud.
You see, I don’t like thinking about the bad stuff – which means I don’t like sharing it – which means I don’t write about it – which probably means, even though I share a lot of personal thoughts, people don’t really know me.
But in a world where selective oversharing is taking over, the idea of being completely translucent in writing is difficult.
Really, really difficult.
After a post I wrote a few days ago, my mother expressed that my writing is not as vulnerable as it once was. She was worried I put too much thought in what others think when they read it, and she was right.
But when you want to write for a living – people have to want to read what you write.
AND THAT IS TERRIFYING.
I love sharing my attempts at discovering who I am, what I want, and where I fit in this world, but I hate sharing the negative side of doing all of those things. Unfortunately, when you don’t want to harp on negatives, you have to find the positives, and sometimes that focus on the positive side shows an idealized, Kim K version of what life is really like.
I guess what I’m trying to get across is this:
Life really is beautiful, chasing after dreams is the best adventure, and love and friendship are the most rewarding feelings in life. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t parts that suck. There are days that are hard, there’s disappointment, there’s loss, and there’s still failure.
I don’t write to help people, or to inspire, or to evoke feeling. But I also don’t write to mislead. I write because I like it, and sometimes I feel like it’s the only thing I innately know how to do. I write when I can’t sleep, I write when I can’t talk things out, I write when I can’t understand how I feel… but that writing isn’t the writing I share. I share the dumbed down version of that, because I have this immense fear of how it will be relayed.
And that’s not fair.
Maybe that’s something we should all strive to change? I’m not saying not to keep the private things private – but this world could use a raw look at things. Maybe it will let us all know how closely our lives and challenges align with one another.
Lately I’ve been worried about what I will leave behind in life. I’m not planning on going anywhere, but it seems like a lot of other people are.. and I can’t help but think about what gets stuck here when we all go.
What memories are left
What impact did we have
Will people miss our actions
I don’t mean will people mourn. I think anyone can do that. I mourn the loss of people I’ve never met before.
ie: reading my newsfeed when it is chock full of obituaries and gofundme links.
I want to know what happens when the grief and shock have past. Is there something lingering around that still makes the world know you were here? Something that’s not a memorial, or work of art, or an awkward shrine on a living room wall.
The only death I’ve ever known that really hurt was the loss of my friend Stephen. I didn’t know Stephen for long, but I knew him long enough to be impacted by his creativity, free spirit, love for yahoos, and his ability to find just the right amount of risk and rebellion in life. Stephen made people think. He made you question everything you once had total faith in. Sometimes to a fault. Many times in conversation, I wanted to sprint back to the easier, picturesque world Stephen had just made my mind leave for good.. but I was too entranced with his take on the world.
Six years later, I still find myself thanking Stephen for opening my mind.
He left that behind.
It was hard to see Stephen go because I felt like he had so much left to do. I thought more of the world needed to know him – they needed to have him impact their lives like he impacted mine.
I wish Stephen was still here fulfilling all of his passions in life, but I think of what he left behind a little differently now. I don’t think about what he could have done anymore. I think about what he did.
And I guess that’s the reason for this post.
I have a horrible habit of reading and stalking all devastating drama on Facebook, CNN, and where ever else it seems to pop up. That habit has shown a seemingly formulaic layout to how reaction and mourning to death goes. For example, there are usually comments of friends and family sending love and prayers, comments of how great the individual was, pictures of memories, long prose form statuses filled with regret, and so on… but one in particular really gets to me.
“They had so much left to offer the world.”
This one haunts me. I know it’s probably true in all accounts of life. We all have more to give, more to see, more people to love, more coffee to drink, etc. Still, I hope no matter how old or young I am when I go, no one thinks I should have done more.
I hope no one thinks I didn’t fulfill the life I had.
I want my day to day interactions with people, art and writing to be enough. And when the inevitable happens, I hope people celebrate the life lived instead of mourning the unlived. After all, isn’t that what living is about. It’s the dying and the uncertainty that makes the act of living so beautiful.
My bedroom looks oddly similar to a crack house, my hamstrings are tighter than they were after my rock climbing adventure in Maine, running an 8miler in downtown Charleston, and that 5 hour yoga lesson I taught last summer combined. There is more dust than I know what to do with on the upper ledge crown molding that runs throughout my apartment, and the OCD traits within me are currently being taunted because I don’t have a step stool to reach said collection of allergen holy ground. I hold my breath every time a cashier swipes my credit card, and I have to close my eyes when I withdraw cash from Chase ATM.
I don’t want to see my balance Chase. YOU CAN’T MAKE ME.
Is this what dreams are made of?
Yesterday I asked someone how to successfully move in to the city. After a weird glance was shot in my direction I said, “NO, REALLY. Like how do you move all your shit in?”
They laughed in my face.
The only way I can be adventurous is to dive in full force without contemplating real life scenarios like money or sanity. I have to go in blind, completely naïve, and with an intense sense of childhood wonder.
Typically, this method proves to be severely flawed, and breeds lots of wine intake until some level of order is restored.
But I don’t mind it.
Just when I really start to get pissed at myself for being a dreamer – I see some random guy playing a piano in the middle of the park or some lady burst out in song mid Target aisle, and the stress from the quickly fading balance in my checking account seems to vanish.
This city’s crazy talented people bring out a better side of me.
They force me to step outside of my box, they force me to smile, they force me to be accepting of everyone, they force me to see the opportunity in life, and they force me to keep dreaming. They are a daily reminder of why I wanted to be here.
Someone once told me if you want to be the best at something, surround yourself around people who are better than you.
That’s exactly what this city is. The whole place is better than me.
I found this along the Freedom Trail in Boston the other day:
“A childhood friend of mine once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf.”
“Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry, and you give it to your friend.”
I had to pick my heart up from off the ground after I read the quote mid stride.
It was referencing one of Gerda Weissman Kein’s experiences as a Holocaust survivor, and while I know the struggles I’ve had in my life in no way come close to Gerda’s, I felt some kind of odd connection.
I’ve been lucky enough to have people like that in my life. People who seem to drop everything, give anything and run full speed when I don’t even ask.
People who know you need them before you know you need them.
People who make this world better just by being aware of others.
That’s something worth writing home about.
I’ve been feeling this for two weeks now, and I think I’ve only just gotten my emotions in order.
I know. Cap, crying? Who would have thought?
The thing about my tears though, the thing I don’t think many people get, is that I really only cry when I’m so happy I don’t know what else to do. I don’t cry when I’m sad, or when I’m stressed, or when I’m freaking out about an essay that instantly vanished from existence 5 minutes before it’s due.
I cry when my heart is so full it somehow explodes via my tear ducts.
The more life I go through the more I appreciate relationships.
I’m not just talking about Mosie.
Adulthood is funny that way.
Friendship changes from a blasé acquaintance to something of much more substance. It becomes this sort of lifeline. The second thud in your weird little heart beat. And if you’re lucky enough, it follows you and supports you no matter what crazy road you choose.
So, thanks for being there. Thanks for showing me what family and friends and love and a crap ton of happy tears look like.
I have this theory, and really it’s more like a signed will and testament.
It’s that little beauts of knowledge have been dangling themselves in front of your eyes for centuries waiting for the exact moment when you reached full maturity and intellectual capacity to expose themselves to you again… to give you one last shot at the pudding.
Clearly, they’ve been there all along. They fought for your attention like a little infatuated sixteen-year-old girl. They tried to warn you of all the shit life could throw your way, but you insisted on finding it all out on your own.
In other words, you have been too egocentric, too closed minded, or too oblivious to acknowledge their significance. And now, when you look back, you realize all of those annoying clichés have stemmed from something real.
All of those short sentences that make you roll your eyes in irritation actually do mean something.
…
This is a little sappy (something I’ve apparently grown accustomed to), but it’s the exact event in which this theory arose:
Two summers ago, my grandmother (aka the human equivalence to Jesus), was in the hospital after a heart attack. This heart attack occurred months after a breast cancer diagnosis, and we (the entire family including the human form of Jesus herself) all thought it was the end for Corrine.
I spent a couple nights at the hospital with her, and tried to really soak in her holy ambiance for all the time I had left. Now, I realize that was more selfish than helpful… but I think Corrine liked me being around because I make a great Skip-Bo partner – in the sense that I’m easily beaten.
But that’s beside the point.
The point is, Corrine and I were listening to some of her favorite tunes when Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera” came on. I found myself really focusing on the lyrics, because I wanted to connect with who my grandmother was as a younger girl. I wanted to appreciate the stuff she’s appreciated in her life. I wanted to cling on to everything about her and her past and who she was before I existed in this world.
When the song ended, I said, “That’s really beautiful. I’ve never heard that.”
And that’s when Corrine really took on the crown of thorns.
“You’ve heard it, Cap! You just never listened.”
(mic drop)
And the theory was developed.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read or heard something that I’ve seen a thousand times, but suddenly it takes on new meaning. I’ve always heard life was cyclic. That there was some kind of serendipity in how things play out. And, if I’m being honest, the way things seem to grow in meaning and substance over time and experience is one of the more vital signs of that sense of connectivity in the world.
I like to think that #lyfe, no matter how its spent, contains surprises and new learning, but now I feel like I’m in a race to find it all out.
I NEED ALL THE CLICHES ANSWERED. ALL OF THEM.
There’s a large part of me that fears some of the knowledge I’ve discovered while revisiting literature or life situations may have never been uncovered if I hadn’t needed to hear it.
But how do I force myself to grasp on to the significance in the moment?
More importantly… Can you even train yourself to do that?
I don’t know, but I will tell you what I’ve figured out so far. The ones that were right from day one. The good ones. The steady ones. The ones Little Wayne would refer to as his bottom bitch… if he read into clichés like I do.
So, without further ado… the five things you thought no one ever told you:
1. Goodbyes really do lead to new hellos.
2. Its never too late to go home.
3. Time spent learning (anything) is never time wasted.
4. There really is a lot of commotion in silence.
5. Life really does start at the end of your comfort zone.
Over the past few months, I’ve read ESPN’s headline story about a track athlete taking a running jump to her death, saw updates on the thought process behind Robin Williams suicide, and I’ve even noticed one of my role models, Andrew Jenks, disclose his own struggles on twitter.
My initial response to the posts were pretty uncomfortable.
They felt invasive. They felt way too close to home.
Depression was pretty common in my household as a child. My grandmother committed suicide over 37 years ago, and many of my immediate family members also deal with a similar fight. Still, even with depression so present in our family circle – we never talk about it. We all know it exists. We all know we are fighting the same fight, but we go along with our day to day interactions without addressing the issues. We’ve pushed those big elephants further and further into the corner, until they’ve become this sort of shrine that we aren’t allowed to talk about or visit.
I don’t know if this is just with me, but depression has always had such a negative connotation. Growing up, my father believed depression wasn’t real. He didn’t understand how it could truly overcome someone. For some reason, that has stuck with me, no matter how hard I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve struggled with depression for years, but I’ve never wanted to admit it. Not even to myself. I’ve refused to see doctors or take medications because I didn’t want to be labeled. I didn’t want anyone to think I had anything else working against me.
Depression isn’t something I struggle with on a daily basis, but when it comes – which it always does – it really hits hard. I go through this weird stage of feeling completely disconnected from the world around me. Holidays, religious sanctions, and even close relationships all suddenly seem so systematic. I know that may sound harsh, but I don’t know how else to explain it. Life becomes more like a formula or Nintendo game, and I can’t seem to rally up the significance in it all.
The general separation from the daily world is bad enough, but feeling like you’re the only person experiencing those thoughts is even worse. I guess that’s why I’m saying all this now. I guess that’s why I’m happy other people are finally saying it too. This depression thing is real. It doesn’t have a standard, there are no prerequisites, and there’s no reason to go through it alone.
Southern Wild 
