Dear Niece,

You have been a teenager for 2 months now and as your older, wiser, and cooler (you’ll agree when you’ve moved passed the angsty early teen years) Aunt, I’ve decided it’s time for me to lend a hand to your musical and emotional education.

The teenage years are hard as hell.  To make it worse, you live in New York City, which is essentially a giant dorm for rowdy teenagers.  You’re going to go through first loves, break ups, and heart aches.  And undoubtedly either you or some of your close friends will go through bouts of depression, abuse,  drugs, sex, and all the other things that go with trying to figure out your place in the world.

And as you know, and I’m sure you’ve made your parents clear of, you need alone time.  You need time to figure your shit out on your own, away from your little brother annoying and your mom asking you to do stuff.  You need time to figure out how to be responsible for yourself and find your place and your love.  And while you do this, you need a soundtrack.

Seriously.

Never ever ever underestimate the power over your emotions that a good playlist can have.

While radio pop is fine for hanging out with your friends, you need something with a little more nutritional value than Ke$ha when you’re in your head.  So I give you the following mixtape as a sampler of bands I believe will speak to you in one way or another.  Close your door, stick some headphones on, turn the volume up and chill.

And no, I haven’t put anything on this list that your mother listens to, as far as I know.

So about the music-

I give you Death Cab for Cutie for life.

Bright Eyes for when you need him.  Use with caution.

Dashboard Confessional for while you’re under the age of 17.  As a 20-something I will admit that I listened to him religiously for the ages of 15 and 16.  Then I never looked back.  Danger if you need Chris Caraba for much longer than that.

Arcade Fire, because they are one of the greatest bands ever.  You will grow with them and they will grow with you.  If you don’t like them now, you’ll be obsessed by college.

Letters To Cleo for moments of being a rocking girl.

Feist for moments of being a dreamy yet deep girl.

Vampire Weekend because you were born in Connecticut and live in New York.  You’re required by law to like them.  Again, if you don’t now, you will in college.

The Shins for heartache, new love, old love, and because they’re awesome.

Rilo Kiley for your fears and self confidence.

Counting Crows for whiny moments.

And Frou Frou because sometimes you do need to just ‘Let Go’.

My apologies for not posting more this week. I’ve had a few pieces of writing in the works, but everything got a bit turned around at the end of last week and took my attention away. And by ‘took my attention away’ I mean I haven’t felt like doing much.
Plans have changed and I think I’m moving.  Again.

England is just not a country for foreigners at the moment. Sure, I spent £500 getting my post-study visa so I could get a proper job and legally work over here, but this economic climate is brutal enough to actual UK and EU citizens. Screw people from further away, right? Never mind that I paid over £10,000 in tuition alone to get my MA over here. My impression, as a foreigner in this country for over a year and half now, is that the higher ups care nothing about foreigners, except for their money.  There’s something about the naive arrogance the English have in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court that still rings somewhat true.  But what makes even more sense to me is the Man from Connecticut’s constant bafflement at how the Medieval English approach life and business.

But having just written an angry bash at the English, I should add this: I will be very sad to move away from the NHS.  Sure there are problems, but I love going into the doctors office for testing and not have to pay a penny, versus the $100 just to see a nurse when you don’t have insurance in the states, followed by the $1,200+ bill you get from Quest Diagnostics when they tell you that the tests came back negative.

So it’s back to The States for me, unless Boyfriend gets funding for his PhD and we decide to drastically change all our plans.
In the end, though, I think I’m happier over there. I think any (basically) well-adjusted person who had a fairly happy childhood would be lying if they said they didn’t find some comfort living in the country they grew up. I’m not saying I want to live down the street from my parents, but I like knowing that members of my family are closer than the other side of the Atlantic. And it’s good to have a safety net under you.  Moving over to England and trying to make a life here has been one of the scariest things I have ever done. I was terrified it wouldn’t work and I’d fail and I’d have to go home with my proverbial tail between my legs.  And that’s exactly what happened.  When I first realized last week that this wasn’t going to work over here I couldn’t help but cry.  I was angry and I felt like Fate was forcing me into a situation I didn’t want.  I kept saying that I wanted to do things ‘on my terms’.  And maybe it’s true—maybe this is a bit of fate that no matter how many applications I sent out I didn’t get a single interview.  Maybe it was fate that told my friend that she needed to find a place on her own rather than find an apartment with me.  Because once she made that decision, she freed me from the only obligation I had that was keeping me in England.

So now I’m heading back, head held not as high as I would like it, but with no tail between me legs.  I’m cutting my losses and taking charge of my future.  I’ve always wanted to get a flat in Brooklyn and now I can.

The night before I left for America last November, my boyfriend spent the evening continuing his unending pursuit to understand the philosophy behind my morals and daily opinions.  He refused to accept that I had no definite philosophy behind any of it.  Perhaps he strives to understand how he can love someone who he considers a Republican, never mind the fact that I find that a bit insulting.  I’m independent, thank you very much.

I told him that, since he said he’d actually like to write letters, that he can ask me these questions in letters, and I will answer them better since I will have the time to sit down and think about my answers.  I am virtually unable to answer questions like that while thinking on my feet.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve never taken the time, but it’s more likely to be because I am easily intimidated in deeper conversations.  I know little will come out of debating other than someone thinking less of me for my opinions.  Generally I find that with my boyfriends I end up feeling as though my opinions are unintelligent and illogical.  I suppose that is what comes with dating an economist.

So I write to him: What you might not see, my love, is that while you analyse people and the world through books on philosophy and politics and logic that line your shelves, I can look at the world through no other means than love.  How we love, our lack of love, our inability to, or our prejudices concerning love, I believe, make up the drive behind our decisions.  It’s not always even the love of people.  Love is entirely immaterial.  Some people love the feeling power and influencing the world around them gives them.  Some people love themselves more than anything else, and hat will naturally be their driving force.

Perhaps I have trouble voicing opinions on things like politics and philosophy because I love having people like me.  In college I got tired of being criticised for saying anything positive about writers like Ayn Rand, because clearly it meant I was a right wing conservative nut.  I know that opinions and views on life are like clothes, as silly as it may sound: what works for one person may not work for another.  So much of what I base my decisions on is what I think is ‘right’, tempered by what I considered acceptable in the society in which I live.  Anthropologically, I see nothing wrong with molding to the socially accepted norm.

So I suppose we will continue to go on looking at the world in completely different way.  He will look for the logic and I will look for the beauty.  But if we look at the Golden Ratio then we also know that there is logic and beauty, and any mathematician worth his salt will defend that there is beauty in logic.

And isn’t a great relationship, after all, supposed to made up of parts that complement each other?

What’s running through my head today:

“Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.
If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion; that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.”
Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

Right now I feel like my reason and passion are both just sitting in the ship’s hold, hoping the current will direct them in one direction or another.

While I do not yet consider myself a writer, I’ve always found writing to be the best way to release emotions, to better understand my own thoughts, and to keep myself creating.  Over the last few years I’ve made attempts to keep a journal, and since moving to England I’ve gotten much better at making entries at least once a week.  I find myself very frustrated when I’ve gone more than a week without taking the time to sit down and work through everything in my head on paper.  A writer’s block for a journal-keeper is probably the most frustrating type of block—for me it feels like I have no thoughts in my head at all when I can’t think of something to write.

The best part about journaling is going back through your entries and being able to see how you’ve changed over time.  My journal from my senior year of high school is a form of endless entertainment and heartache for me.  Reading through it a stroll down the clichéd memory lane that I could never do on my own.  Over the last few years I’ve realized that I have a horrible memory.  I have difficultly remembering why I ever liked certain bands, or how music affected the passion I felt for my high school crush, or why I even liked a guy whose face was covered in cocktail-onion sized zits (my oldest sister’s characterization of him).

More recent journals remind of topics that affected me or even inspire new ideas that I want to explore in writing.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching too much Ugly Betty recently, but I want to start actually writing about things on this blog- not just documenting events in my life.  What good is telling the world about what you’re doing if you can’t offer a way for other people to connect to you?  So, while I know I have about 2 people who actually read this, I want to turn this blog into something worthwhile.  If I’m so desperate to get into the world of publishing, then it’s time I started proving that I actually have some ability.

Is it possible to have such active dreams that they actually keep you from getting a good night sleep?

The knight couldn’t understand why she couldn’t defeat the dragon. He had been continuously blocking different paths from her home for yeas. Every time she would go out for new travels he would be there, denying her passage. She had the sharpest sword and the strongest armor, but still she had no victories against this vile beast. After many years of their battles, she went out to meet him with every piece of her armory. She went down a path she has never taken, somehow knowing she would find him there. After an hour of walking she found him lounging in the middle of the road. Their eyes met and any passerby would have known immediately to run, for battle was in the air.

“You seek to pass again, fair knight?” asked the Dragon.

“No,” said the knight. “I have decided today is the last day I will face you.” She took off all her armor and laid her weapons down in front of the massive dragon. “I weary of taking part in a fight I can never win.”

The Dragon smiled at the knight as smoke curled from his nostrils.

“Take up your weapons, knight,” said the Dragon. “You will need it for other battles. Your willingness to meet me barefaced shows that you have learned that not all battles can be won by force- or indeed even won at all. Our quarrel is ended and you will not find me blocking your path again. Others may, but I can only with your happy travels.”

And with that the dragon smiled at the knight and took flight back to his home in the nearby mountains. The knight collected her belongings and returned to her house to begin her travels for the first time in a long while.

So a couple weekends ago, while staying with my friend and soon-to-be roommate in London, I got to try my hand at the wonderfully imprecise art of lomography.  I suppose this lo-fi photography is naturally my next step to hipster-dom, following my love and collection of LPs.

The Lomography Store at Carnaby Street does these group projects called ‘Lomomissions’, where, for an entry fee, you get a free roll of film, the opportunity to borrow a lomography camera, and go around London with a group of equally-excited lomographers on a specific subject mission.  The one we went on focused on looking at London from a tourist’s perspective.  It was great getting the opportunity to try different film cameras.  Ever since getting my nice digital 5 years ago, I’ve abandoned film.  And now that my nice digital has died an unexplained death, I may have to fork out money for a lomography L-CA or a Holga.  I’ve got a few pictures here, but the rest of the decent pictures are on my lomohome.

In other news- Albums that I have finally went and purchased:

She & Him, Volumes 1 & 2

Neko Case, Middle Tornado

The new She & Him is as low-key and lovely as the first, while my love-affair with Neko Case’s music is undying.

It’s not an entry-level graduate job if it requires a year of experience, you mean job recruiters!

Apparently my summers temping as an administrative assistant and reorganizing my dad’s firm’s filing system don’t count.

Someone give me a job please?  that doesn’t require asking “do you want fries with that”?

Since graduating from a masters program I’ve had a lot of time for reading- or at least few enough things to fill the day with that I’ve done more reading than usual.  I’ve gotten through the first four Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books, Love In The Time of Cholera (finally), The Power and the Glory, My Name is Red, and sadly Twilight, New Moon, and Skinny Bitch.  The last three were mindless distractions, but were at least enjoyable.

Of all of these, the two that have affected me the most are Love in the Time of Cholera and My Name is Red.  Perhaps it’s the descriptions of emotional passion, be it for people or careers or memories, that put these two books in my top book list.  After reading One Hundred Years of Solitude a few years ago, on the suggestion of a dear friend who did an entire art project based around the imagery in the book, I’m suprised it took me so long to read another Gabriel Garcia Marquez book. And even though I loved Cholera, I still think Solitude is the better book.  Reality is s ofar removed from the book that you spend half of it feeling like you’re reading it while standing on your head, which I can’t help but find more interesting than a love story- albeit beautifully written and constructed with moments of such truth that you have to stop to record sentences so you don’t forget them.

And what I like about both books, Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera and Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red is the cultural settings that I am so far removed from.  Marquez’s South America is a place I understand only through being not so far removed geographically, and from knowing  people from that area.  Pamuk’s Ottoman Istanbul, though, is a world I will never experience beyond the pages of his book.

The romance in the book is not it’s strength, which was just the author’s intention, I think.  The best moments are the inner thoughts of the Sultan’s miniturists and The Murderer.  The passion he gives to their beliefs and convictions make me wish I could feel a calling the way Pamuk’s artists do.

In both cases, I am left longing to be doing something other thant tearing through books, sending out job applications, and knitting all day.  Can something please finally break?

Now to decide between finishing Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, or starting either Middlemarch or Eclipse (darn you Stefanie Meyers and your addictive story-telling).