Nº. 1 of  40

tellmeakirsten

she rocks
she swings
she delights in faded things
her mystery not of high heels
and eyeshadow

I’d like to say thanks to everyone for the love today and urge everyone to spend 10 minutes to watch the video posted above.

If you don’t have time, consider the following: instead of viewing the death of Osama as some sort of karmic debt now paid, let us meditate on our own suffering to relate to those across the globe from us. If there is one thing that I have learned from 9-11, it is that suffering – deep, authentic suffering - is universal. The death of a loved one resonates with anyone who has experienced loss in spite of religious or racial differences. Disconnected by language barriers and superficial dissimilarities, we sometimes forget to communicate with others using the universal language of human suffering (and out of suffering, love and compassion).

Instead of supporting headlines that read, “We Got the Bastard,” put your energies toward organizations that help spread light. Osama and his people have terrorized both the Middle East, America, and other nations – instead of spreading the hate, use this moment to increase your love and understanding for those across the globe who seem “so different” from us. They too have suffered. To everyone across the globe who lost a loved one due to the direct or indirect actions of Osama, my heart goes out to you today.

The last minute of the video reveals the following: “I wanted to say that we have to try to know the other people - The Other - you have to be generous in your heart, your mind must be generous, you must be tolerant. You have to fight against violence and I hope that someday we’ll all live today in peace, in respect of each other.”

“Once In a Lifetime,” Talking Heads

You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

Graduating in 2 weeks

Don’t aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscious commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run - in the long run, I say! - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.

—Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning Preface

This is kinda special.

This is kinda special.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

—Albert Einstein

“Just like a Woman” - Bob Dylan

I like this, but there is nowhere to put it in my apartment.
This is why I put it here.

I like this, but there is nowhere to put it in my apartment.

This is why I put it here.

Please grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Nº. 1 of  40