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I always used to assume that my life would be utterly ordinary.

It probably will be, but I’m realizing that there is at least a possibility that it could be extraordinary.

Hm!

I like re-framing the way I think. It’s a good exercise.

Another (otherwise unrelated) example of re-framing that I like to tell to my formerly SAT-obsessed friends: All the right answers are on the test. You just have to pick them.

Now off to papers, projects, and exams. Cheers.

I recently called a narwhal a beluga. 

Why, you ask. I’ve been trying to figure it out, too

What relay of thoughts led me to that gross error in nomenclature?!

I had just seen a man disguised as some kind of strange creature. This strange creature had single long horn protruding from its forehead.

M.y first reaction: UNICORN

But wait…unicorns aren’t the only creatures with that characteristic protruding horn. 

I remembered that there was some kind of whale that might fit the bill as well. 

I think I formed the flawed mental link between unicorn and beluga because like unicorns, belugas are incredibly adorable.

They just ooze goodnaturedpeacefulbliss from their pearly skin.  Plus, this one can paint.

Narwhals, on the other hand, well… they look tad less magical and friendly. 

I don’t know what the point of this post is, exactly. I just think that belugas are great.

psychotherapy:

For thousands of years, people have speculated that there’s some correlation between sadness and creativity, so that people who are a little bit miserable (think Van Gogh, or Dylan in 1965, or Virginia Woolf) are also the most innovative. Aristotle was there first, stating in the 4th century B.C.E. “that all men who have attained excellence in philosophy, in poetry, in art and in politics, even Socrates and Plato, had a melancholic habitus; indeed some suffered even from melancholic disease.” This belief was revived during the Renaissance, leading Milton to exclaim, in his poem Il Penseroso: “Hail, divinest melancholy/whose saintly visage is too bright/to hit the sense of human sight.” The romantic poets took the veneration of sadness to its logical extreme, and described suffering as a prerequisite for the literary life. As Keats wrote, “Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”

Well, it turns out the cliché might be true after all: Angst has creative perks. That, at least, is the conclusion of Modupe Akinola, a professor at Columbia Business School, in her paper “The Dark Side of Creativity: Biological Vulnerability and Negative Emotions Lead to Greater Artistic Creativity”…

I took a few short video clips during the July 14th Procession and Mass in Response to Border Violence that I worked on this summer in El Paso for Annunciation House, but I had completely forgotten about them until today when i was going through some files on my hard drive!

There isn’t much to see, but just hearing the music in the background brings me back to that night.  This clip depicts what was going on once the Mass was officially over. As you can see, some people stuck around. 

Halloween.

Without a doubt, my favorite “American” holiday.  Thanksgiving is nice. I like giving thanks.  Halloween, however, is purely about fun and dressing up.  You can be someone—or better yet something— else for the evening, no questions asked.  In retrospect, I am realizing that it was one of the few holidays that my family always celebrated…even once my parents split. We’d get dressed up, my mom would watch Halloween programs on TV and answer the door, delighting in getting to see all the neighborhood kids’ costumes, and my dad and I would venture out into the spooky unknown for sweets.

Right after my dad moved out in October of my freshman year in high school, we (mom, dad, jessica and I) ate Thanksgiving dinner together. It was excruciating.  Halloween, a few weeks earlier, however, was still a blast, despite the shit show. My dad had always escorted me while trick-or-treating, and that was one of the few things that didn’t change. 

Anyway…I’m glad it’s nearly Halloween. Only good memories.

This is one of them.

Not the first story…that’s terrible. The second one.

Two Pak Christians shot dead near court

Two Christians have been killed, a church ransacked and shops burnt as Muslim-Christian tensions erupted into five hours of violence in Faisalabad on July 19.

Police were only able to restore order and disperse the crowds by using shellfire. One day…

So I have returned from my summer hiatus, and the summer blog is complete!

Saludos, mis amigos.

fuckyeahbeantown:

thirty-twoandathirdtimes:

via dirigibles

This is my favorite stop on the T… Charles MGH on the Red line.

I miss Boston, but this summer in El Paso will be great and I’m glad to be in Greensboro right now.