let the future take care of itself

presents. gifts. nows. time. times here and there. I am thankful and hopeful. it's easy to be that during these weeks of break, during this time of low obligation and high relaxation, of sleeping in and plenty of yoga and not having to go out into the dreary snow-spitting outside unless you really want to.

I am reading Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus. friend Chris sent it to me and said it was very me. I am not far into it yet, but I can see what he means. it is also reminding me a lot of my posthumanism class from last semester.

the blurbs on this paperback call Camus lyrical. and eloquent. it is a stolid kind of lyric eloquence, I think, almost plodding but just light enough to not feel like twenty pounds of paving stones.

"At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millennia. For a second we cease to understand it because for centuries we have understood in it solely the images and designs we had attributed to it beforehand, because henceforth we lack the power to make use of that artifice. The world evades us because it becomes itself again." 

and that reminds me of this quote:

a quote I read in Richard Power's Orfeo last summer when I should have been studying more dutifully for prelims. "Dissonance is a beauty that familiarity hasn't yet destroyed."

it comes at the same thought Camus does, a little bit. the unfamiliar is some necessary core to beauty. and alienation is part of that.

I have almost the whole Camus essay still to read though. there will likely be more quotes from it tossed into my everything notebook, as I read.


these are a $2.50 pair of goodwill shoes that I bought just before a Saturday lunch date last February. they are still sitting in my pile of shoes at the bottom of the stairs, but I think they are beyond wearing. too smushed and stretched and scruffy, lacking all the sturdiness a wearable shoe should have.

these are a not-quite-as-cheap-but-still-cheap pair of flipflops that I bought in Hawaii in 2009. I wore them past the point of unwearableness, until the sole of one split in half and tripped me as I crossed a busy intersection one day. these are not still at the bottom of my stairs in a pile of other more wearable shoes. I took photos of them and threw them out that very day.

I took photos of these trashed shoes because... because why? they seem sort of beautiful. though maybe that is more due to the backdrop of my autumn porch. I'm not sure. these shoes took me places. they became ragged and deteriorating and a little bit grimy, and thus more interesting.

time. nows. things that are here right now won't always be. shoes get worn out. everything does. there isn't any easy way of un-wearing shoes. newness. presents.

I have plenty of shoes and don't need any more. plenty of books, maybe, and for a week or so plenty of space for dreaming and sleeping in, too. what do I need? what wants will accompany me into a new January? which ones will got met and well-traveled and worn? good questions.