Caroline Anais

I combed through the daily news stories of three different news sources, and could not find any articles on the current occupation of Wall Street. Am I looking in the wrong places? I expected NPR to have some details for me, and there was nothing there, nor was there any information on the New York Times website. What’s the deal, fellas? We’re all over citizen demonstrations in other countries, shouldn’t our own citizens get a little more coverage?

Also, on a more frivolous note - I bought awesome headphones and am very impatient for them to get here, because I have been without my iPod for like 3 months now and it’s awful.

Please stop trying to stigmatize educated women with your snazzy shirts. Young girls already have enough societal pressures put upon them, without your lame attempts at being witty.

Sincerely,

A well-educated, beautiful woman, who has SOMEHOW managed to always do her homework, and still be sexy.

I have been Tumblr absent for the past few months - so I thought I would re-emerge with a quote from a memoir I just read, Two Kinds of Decay, by Sarah Manguso

“This is suffering’s lesson: pay attention. The important part might come in a form you do not recognize. You might not know to love it. But to pay attention is to love everything. To see the future as brightness. Everything that happens is the last time it happens. We see things only as their own fatal brightness, and there is nothing after that brightness. You can’t learn from remembering. You can’t learn from guessing. You can learn only from moving forward at the rate you are moved, as brightness, into brightness.”

My book preferences usually keep me away from memoirs, because I guess as a reader I’m a bit of an escapist - I like my books to take me out of the real world. Why would I want to read about the real world, when I live it everyday? But I don’t think “escapist” is a good word to describe me either, because I really have no depressive symptoms that relate to the real world, I just like to experience something else from time to time.

I am thankful, though, that a class this semester made me read Two Kinds of Decay, because it is a wonderful memoir. It recounts Sarah Manguso’s nine-year struggle with a rare autoimmune disorder called Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP), in which the body’s immune system perceives myelin (the fat that covers the nerves) as a foreign agent in the body, and attacks it. This can result in the loss of feeling and mobility in the arms and legs. (For more information, you can visit http://www.gbs-cidp.org/aboutcidp.htm).

The memoir, told in a very simple and honest narrative, explores a patients long-term relationship with the American Health Care System, and her own experience with a disorder that she will always carry with her.

The quote above is the last few lines of the memoir, and really made me reflect on some things when I first read it. We all go through lives wanting our experiences to be important; wanting to do momentous things because we don’t want to waste the time we are given. But the most momentous, or outrageous, or extreme moments in our life, might not be the most important - and if we only focus on those moments, if we only strive and push ourselves to live those moments, without a single thought to anything else, we may miss something else. And that inattention to every moment of our lives, could cost us something beautiful. So even if there are days where you find yourself sitting on a couch for hours at end watching Netflix (which I am very prone to do..), or if you’re buried under piles and piles of homework, and you think to yourself, “My God, my life is so boring, nothing ever happens,” don’t despair! Remember that this is your life, plain and simple, and no time is ever wasted because you are here, breathing in and out, experiencing moments that are all your own.

I think this is the longest thing I’ve ever posted! I’m sure a picture of Simon Pegg will be following shortly, however, because if we’re being honest, I’m such a sucker for wit, and a well-worn blazer.

I feel slightly Tumblr famous right now — fysimonpegg reblogged one of my Simon posts.