Thursday, October 29, 2009

Leap

During my first semester of college there was a writing class, English 111, that I was required to take. I ended up LOVING my teacher! In fact, she's probably my favorite teacher so far. Anyway, a few weeks into the class we read an excerpt from an essay written by Brian Doyle. The essay is called "Leap" and was written about September 11th as seen from the people on the ground outside the trade center towers. More specifically it's about watching people jump from the towers--two people in particular. When we first read it in class, it was so powerful and even now I can't read it without getting choked up. But it was this next passage especially that I love so much. It might be strange, but I used to doodle it over and over again all the time during classes. Today was the first time in months that I'd even thought of it, but I want to share it with you. It goes:

I keep going back to his hand and her hand, nestled in each other with such extraordinary, ordinary, succinct, ancient, naked, perfect, stunning, simple, ferocious love.

Read it again. The second time, think about every adjective as it pertains to love. I've had this passage memorized for months; drawn it over, and over, and over, and over again. But every time I do, it just...it's just so beautiful, it makes my heart hurt. When I finally do get married, that's the kind of love I want. 

 The rest of the essay is really short and very, very powerful and can be found here

Monday, October 26, 2009

Dancing

I'm not very graceful. Growing up I was more of the basketball/softball/polevault type than the ballet/tap/jazz type of girl, but so often now I wish I was a decent dancer. Anyway, I dance at school, for those of you who don't know. I've taken two semesters of ballroom and one of modern. I completely stink at modern and am slightly better at ballroom but I LOVE ballroom dancing and watching other people dance and pretending it's me. 
My favorite TV show right now is "So You Think You Can Dance" and this is my favorite video from last season (season 5). It's kind of a sad video, but watching it makes me...happy? Not exactly, but it's just so beautiful. I love it :) And I want to share it with you all so here goes:
(ps: you don't get to hear the story behind it so it kind of looks like he's going to kill/eat her, which makes sense when you know that he represents an addiction)

 I don't know how to post just the video so here's the link. Please watch it?