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semiantieverything

only slightly slanted toward the negative
John Steinbeck on Falling in Love: A 1958 Letter to his eldest son ➜

New York
November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First — if you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second — There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply — of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it — and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another — but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

The morning, like the very late night, can be a very weird place unless it is carefully and accurately considered. I’ve poured over two a.m. and the perils of late night thought before, deciding that it is both the most dangerous and the most fruitful of creative times. However, seldom do I see the dangerous along with the good in the early morning hours after we open our eyes from sleep, when the sun is back to keep the dopamine levels up and the possibilities of the day are yet ahead of us.

Unless rightly considered, the morning can bring with it an isolation that in today’s media infused world leads to a terrible cycle of grasping for social needs. Maybe my brain is the only one that works this way, or perhaps more realistically the only one that works this way early in the morning, but I’ve read too many books and too many social media ramblings to believe that this isolation is unique to my situation. 

Anyway, I scribbled this morning about the out-streched arm of social needs and how dangerous it can be in this media world and then, of course, a funny thing happened. I betrayed my own early morning disdain for all things social and technological and moseyed on over to the depth of the Feel Good Lost scrolls and found a lovely little shout out amongst the babbling that just so happened to change the way this particular morning will be viewed. 

So here’s to changing the way things are viewed. Here’s to the ways we realize that things are not as heavy as we once thought. Here’s to having the morning rightly considered as opportunistic and new rather than silent and alone. And most of all here’s to early morning Moomba, the truest and most effective of kick-starts to a good day.

RIVERSIDE MOTHERFUCKER!!

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(via error4h04)

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I want to be you.

I want to be you.

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This girl. Hurry up and get out of the way winter, we have things to do.

This girl. Hurry up and get out of the way winter, we have things to do.

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(By Kip Photographie)

(By Kip Photographie)

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Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. —

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray 

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Jeff Luker

Jeff Luker

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While mindlessly scrolling through the infinite pages of Tumblr something entirely inconsequential, but also very interesting, caught my eye. Someone was making one of those super corny “send me a number corresponding to a question and I’ll answer it” things (which are entirely asinine but that’s a different subject completely) and the first item on their list was “What was the first thing you did in 2012.” That got me thinking about what my answer would be.

My initial thought was that I popped a cork and drank champagne from the bottle like a rapper, but then I remembered that we celebrated both central and eastern time in our cabin and that was the central time celebration. So what was the first thing I did in 2012 as the ball dropped on NYC? I was running around the room, specifically being chased around the room by a good friend and pretty girl, and ruckusly laughing as loud as my laugh would go; a picture of youthful joy and exuberance. 

What a tone to set. Here’s to hoping that the coming days can be filled with that kind of living. Let’s have less stress and strain and more running around laughing because that is truly a good use of our days.