a semi-autobiography in eight parts.

I. You write him a postcard. "I don't know how to tell you but I'm finally letting go," it says. The postcard is from Paris and when you finish writing it, you slide it back into the drawer with all the other words you never said. You ask your empty hands if this means you are letting go. Everyone memorizes the backs of their hands, but you'll never know your own as well as you know the scar like a poem permanent on his thumb.

II. You like tea more than coffee but you drink coffee because on days when you relent to a cup of tea you become afraid that you're turning into your mother. You drink it anyways and remember the best moments of childhood.

III. At night you run your fingertips across your ribcage and wonder about all the words that don't live there yet. You're bad at commitments but sometimes when you read Mary Oliver you sigh in relief. These are words that could rest on your ribs forever.

IV. You grow playlists slowly on your computer, choosing the songs carefully. You're trying to bring that feeling back with the music. Maybe nostalgia is the closest you'll ever get.

V. You told her once that you were bad at goodbyes. All this time later, and it's still true.

VI. You type fast, "maybe someday," and hit send.

VII. You ask your hands again what it means to let go.

VIII. The tea water is boiling. Your hands still don't answer.

the moving words of nicole krauss.

The weak yellow light of lamps during the dusk of two in the morning has seen me awake, reading "just one more" chapter of this book. I can hardly stand the thought of it ending, and so I go back, I read again, I mull on the words much like I imagine a philosopher would, but in the end, it's the honesty that gets me every time. Six books hold the only pages I've cried in, and while I'm only halfway through this one, I've already cried twice. There's a bittersweetness to Nicole Krauss' words, an intrinsic poignancy, and a heartbreakingly beautiful depth. I cannot recommend it more. And while it's out of context (it's on page 38 of my copy), this is one of the paragraphs that felt like home and goodbyes and the last morning in a place you love, all at once.

7. There is a photograph of my mother than no one has ever seen.

In the fall, my mother went back to England to start university. Her pockets were full of sand from the lowest place on earth. She weighed 104 pounds. There's a story she sometimes tells about the train ride from Paddington Station to Oxford when she met a photographer who was almost completely blind. He wore dark sunglasses, and said he'd damaged his retinas a decade ago on a trip to Antarctica. His suit was perfectly pressed, and he held his camera in his lap. He said he saw the world differently now, and it wasn't necessarily bad. He asked if he could take a picture of her. When he raised up the lens and looked through it, my mother asked what he saw. "The same thing I always see," he said. "Which is?" "A blur," he said. "Then why do it?" she asked. "In case my eyes ever heal," he said. "So I'll know what I've been looking at."

nicole krauss, the history of love

xx h

seasonal rituals

Rituals are a beautiful thing. Even though new things bring excitement, rituals ground us. They instill a familiar wonder in each heart by knowing--and anticipating--the rituals each season holds.
Spring is the time of freckles beginning to dot my face and doing school outside and simple meals outside under the shade of a tree glowing with pale new leaves.
 Every afternoon in the summer, when you can practically feel the sun burning your skin, I go to the pool and read. Afterwards, the long summer-night rituals begin: looking for fireflies and batting away mosquitoes and staying up a bit longer to catch the coolness of the darkness.
 Fall rituals consist of slipping into new routines and the first fires, small and smoky. The leaves change colors--or sometimes not, depending on the kind of year that's been had.
 Winter rituals are beautiful if you know where to look. Underneath pale skin lie deep thoughts and warm bowls of soup for what seems like every meal.
And before long, right when you think you can't take another one of those terribly short cold days, you start almost-spring rituals of lengthening days and looking for budding branches and opening windows a crack to let in the fresh breeze. Then the spring cleaning bug hits and when you look up from scrubbing, airing, and dusting, you notice that a new season has pushed through the grayness and arrived and whole cycle starts all over again.
cc

on learning to love where you live.

Fernweh means an ache for distant, a craving for travel, an insatiable desire to get out and see the world. It means wanting to be somewhere else, and for the first sixteen years of my life, I'd say it fit me to a T. I was always complaining about the Texas heat, promising I'd leave as soon as I could. Begging my parents for trips: "can we go to Boston, how about LA?" Signing up for camp at church so I could add a few more states to my list.

Recently I was re-reading my journal from last summer, a summer defined by traveling, and I came across a line that struck me, that made me stop. "I am always looking for a way to leave," I'd written. "What I really need, I think, is a reason to stay."

And do you know what? Somewhere since then, in between Saturday mornings spent at the farmer's market downtown and Friday night football games yelling our lungs out, in between watching the sunrise at cross country practice and sitting in the passenger seat of my friend's car on the way to school after late start breakfasts, in between magnificent concerts and funny stories we'll tell in twenty years and writing an immeasurable amount of words just to figure it all out, I think I found a reason. 

More than one, maybe. A million reasons to love where I live, a million reasons I belong. A million reasons to stay. They're all wrapped up in the sunset and the skyline and the roads I take to school each day, and more than anything, in the people. 

The fact is, I'll be off to college soon enough, most likely living somewhere completely new. I have plans for this summer that involve new countries and new states and I'm excited. Traveling will always be a part of me, and even though I no longer constantly want to be somewhere else, when I get the chance to explore, I'm going to take it.

But right now, when I'm here, I aim to enjoy it. Because here is a pretty great place to be. 

there's no place like home.

Kendall

p.s. hey...it's been a while, hasn't it? 

wanderlust in our DNA

I like to think that there is something in our blood, our souls, our very beings that make so many of us so in love with new places, so eager to travel and visit and explore. But there is something equally rooted that instills a love for our hometowns or at least our homes - the places we were born and raised. And no matter how fervently we dream of far-away cities, maybe the most beautiful thing of all is our own towns. (A video I put together):

I'm Kinga, a video-maker - because it combines my two passions, photography and words - and a blogger. I write, I read, I over-think, I dream of living across the ocean in London while learning to love the city I live in. (You can frequently find me here, on my youtube channel.)

staff picks

+ This colouring book

+ A rad canoe trip video (above) by a friend almost makes me wish it was summer. 

+ This smoothie makes a good weekend breakfast.

+ Kendall discovers a tea brand that shares her affinity with literary quotes.

+ She also Googles 'Andy Warhol cats' and that is why we love her.

+ Hannah Banana has made this banana ice-cream three times.

+ Quiet World by Jeffery McDaniel

+ "Start being different in the way that you actually are."

+ Leave it to Katie to introduce us to these cool Berlinese sculptures. 

+ Art by Marc Johns

+ Sundry Sullen's collection of New Zealand photographs

--
Abbey

I carry my words in coffee mugs and paper cups.

if I could, I would sit down with you over coffee.

buy you your favorite. grande caramel frapp? it's on me. prefer a green tea? there's no trouble. missed breakfast and want a caramel roll? just ask. the line winds slowly around counters piled high with travel mugs at the peak of too-expensive to splurge on. scattered conversation floats around the room, interrupted by the hum of coffee and the taps that come from a generation glued to their phones. we wait until they call our names or yell our drinks. nod to the baristas. mumble a hurried thanks with grace as our hands hold the $3.49 cups.

settle down, let me tell you a story.

the tables are taken, so we sit by the window. the leather chairs are perfect to sink into, and I have a week's worth of worries to unload. our words spill easily and we stop only to sip cooling cups. outside the sky is grey, the world washed of color. but here, it's almost easy to forget that winter has us in its white folds. there are colors not colors and warmth not from the sun.

how is life?

you say.

and I smile.

good.


h