pleasant surprise

m. downing

[apleasantsurprise]

on not writing

did I ever want to be a writer? 

maybe not. 

I had vague and halfhearted ambitions, hamstrung by financial anxiety. I liked the idea of being a writer, mostly because you could be by yourself most of the time. think about things that interested you, consider your feelings, etc. 

sure I wrote, I wrote for my college newspaper, at jobs, but it wasn’t till my late twenties or early thirties when my abject loneliness and desperate need to express and CONNECT dovetailed with confessional internet culture. thus spawning tumblr posts, personal essays, words that I recall on occasion with some surprise but not quite? regret. 

part of it is wanting to be invisible but also to be known. that is the great gift of the internet. there is so much acting IRL, just to move through the day as an adult. sometimes you just want to say - write - what you really think, what you really feel. 

...that doesn’t pay the bills though! and I never identified any specific end goal vis a vis writing that would. I did not envision a book, a pitch, anything that could be realized to fruition. 

I never believed that even if I wanted to, I could. 

it wasn’t until I stopped even trying to be a writer that my life improved by any measure. I just remembered that I lived with my parents for a year -- when I was in my THIRTIES. that time is so mortifying, I had almost blocked it out. I felt so bad about myself, my situation, all spurred by being laid off in LA - I was paralyzed. It was paralyzing. 

Until one day I took money out of my IRA to move out. You aren’t supposed to do that, as any good financial advisor will tell you, but also I had about eight dollars in my checking account so it was about as good a decision as I could make. 

Got the money, got an apartment. Then came the job. Where I met my husband. HOLY SHIT I HAVE A HUSBAND! Never thought that would happen. (hi honey) Then we had a baby. But before the baby came, I had complications. I had to take medical leave. Then my husband got a job in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

So now here we are, the baby is now a toddler and its time to go to work again. And again with the feverish internet searches - maybe I could be a programmer? a “big data” analyst? (what is that) or ooo look the local country station is hiring a nighttime DJ. doooown the rabbit hole.

then I remembered that once upon a time I wanted to write. That I did write. That I knew writers. Writers who now have TV shows and books and the like. 

Huh, should I start writing again?

[apleasantsurprise]

“Go to the Limits of Your Longing” by Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Joanna Macy + Anita Barrows

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me.

Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Book of Hours, I 59

[buzzfeed]

The Amazing Story Of How A Sheep Wearing A Christmas Sweater Was Reunited With His Family

[npr]

In case you need some joy today. -Emily

[apleasantsurprise]

it was the ISIS of interpersonal relationships. 

or, 

more like a tsunami.

one minute you are at the ocean,

you haven't been in a long time.

you are soaking up the sun, listening to the waves thinking,

this is nice.

maybe it's a touch hot, sort of sticky and also kind of crowded. you can see the detritus washed up on the sand. plastic bags and beer bottles and cigarette stubs. 

basically, its like a beach in texas.

not the best beach by a couple of thousand miles from either coast,

but still,

its a beach. 

and you are there. 

at least you're there.

but then that whole entire ocean pulls back, suddenly, 

and comes back at you with unrelenting force, unleashing all it has.

directly onto you.

you have become a bullseye. 

it smashes and suffocates.

you think, this I might not survive. 

like in the THE IMPOSSIBLE.

but you do, you survive. 

afterwards, 

of course you want to stay safe and dry on land. 

where nothing can happen. 

where you can't become a bullseye. 

but it doesn't work like that, 

because,

we are surrounded by water. 

seventy one percent of the earth is water. 

there's no way around water. 

it does help to find a good beach.

[apleasantsurprise]

besides CURB,

ITS ALWAYS SUNNY is the only sitcom that consistently leads to actual LOL.

THE GANG BROKE DEE...what an episode.

gonna have to get this shirt. 

[apleasantsurprise]

Double star

For other uses, see Double star (disambiguation).

In observational astronomy, a double star is a pair of stars that appear close to each other in the sky as seen from Earth when viewed through an optical telescope. This can happen either because the pair forms a binary star, i.e. a binary system of stars in mutual orbit, gravitationally bound to each other, or because it is an optical double, a chance alignment of two stars in the sky that lie at different distances.[1][2] Binary stars are important to stellar astronomers as knowledge of their motions allows direct calculation of stellar mass and other stellar parameters. Since the beginning of the 1780s, both professional and amateur double star observers have telescopically measured the distances and angles between double stars to determine the relative motions of the pairs.[3] If the relative motion of a pair determines a curved arc of an orbit, or if the relative motion is small compared to the common proper motion of both stars, it may be concluded that the pair is in mutual orbit as a binary star. Otherwise, the pair is optical.[2] Multiple stars are also studied in this way, although the dynamics of multiple stellar systems are more complex than those of binary stars.

There are three types of paired stars:

optical doubles — unrelated stars which appear close together through chance alignment with Earth

visual binaries — gravitationally-bound stars which are separately visible with a telescope

non-visual binaries — stars whose binary status was deduced through more esoteric means such as occultation (eclipsing binaries), spectroscopy (spectroscopic binaries), or anomalies in proper motion (astrometric binaries).

Conceptually, there is no difference between the latter two categories, and improvements in telescopes can shift previously non-visual binaries into the visual class, as happened withPolaris in 2006. Thus it is only our inability to observe the third group telescopically that makes the difference.

wikipedia

[mrsgeiger-deactivated20250807]

Summer ends for us officially on Monday, when we go to meet the girls’ teachers at school and drop off the load of school supplies into each of their classes. The school uniforms are back hanging in the closets. And I’ve spent beyond our budget on all of this. Tuesday classes begin.

This...

[apleasantsurprise]

'Nonetheless, character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self-respect springs.'

:

'To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notion of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan; no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.

It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.'

joan didion, via vogue (1961), via longform

[apleasantsurprise]

know there is someone watching over you

i hope you know that you could sail right on

i hope you know you got the ocean blue

[apleasantsurprise]

WILD

[apleasantsurprise]

once there was a triangle, 

then I was just a dot.

[fashioninpaintings-blog]

Ballet Dancer Seated on a Stool by Henri Matisse, 1927

[apleasantsurprise]

"Want to get unstuck? Maybe it's time to stop analyzing it.

  You can work out your family of origin issues, and neuroses, and past life traumas with your shrink or your shaman. You can talk talk talk it out all day long (I know, I've done it). You can trace the cause of your wounds and why you're so stuck. But at some point, eventually, who cares WHY you're stuck. Instead of focusing on how you got to where you are, you've got to shift your attention to where you'd rather be.

  I've had at least a thousand conversations about success and desire. And I've noticed that when someone starts over-explaining WHY they're stuck, it can be an indicator that they're not 100% interested in getting unstuck. Recapitulating the past can provide a lot of comfort and confirmation. But...

Too much analysis can create paralysis.  

As the saying goes, "Who cares why the elephant is standing on your foot? Just get him off."

  When I worked one-on-one with strategy clients, I began starting our session with this: "I'm asking you, for this hour together, to try to not talk about your past. We're here to create your future, let's just declare that the past has little bearing on where you want to go." Some folks squirmed, could barely resist slipping into old stories. Some people were like, "What a great idea. I'm so tired of my story. Let's move forward!"

  Sometimes you can't see why you were stuck until after you get unstuck. Hindsight and high-sight solves a lot of mysteries. In the mean time, you've got a new story to write, and it looks nothing like your past."

Danielle LaPorte

[apleasantsurprise]

Sunset at an Apartment Complex

[apleasantsurprise]

three years ago I left los angeles,

and I thought it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

…little did I know then, much worse things would happen in the years to come.

much worse.

but, you survive.

you move on.

you make the best of things.

or you try to, or,

you reach a point where just having a job and an apartment feels like winning the lottery. my gratitude for a paycheck is immeasurable.

still, i can’t say i’m necessarily glad for how things turned out. anytime there’s an election or an oversized truck honking at my hybrid in traffic, I wish I was back where I still feel I belong - a blue state, preferably one with an ocean.

as I recently told a friend, even tho I spent the last few months in culver city crying in my studio apartment, sad, alone, single, and unemployed,

i'll always love los angeles & look back at it fondly.

that said,

I went to the grocery store tonight, yes I grocery shop on saturday nights, don’t grocery shop shame me,

and came across Hard Proof, a local funk band? a conga line formed at one point?

everyone in LA would be way too cool for this, I thought,

as I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

[apleasantsurprise]

took a personality assessment,

and apparently I'm an 'idealist',

'more likely to get more satisfaction from volunteering in a soup kitchen than succeeding in a highly paid, but personally unfulfilling job"

that sure explains a lot.

[apleasantsurprise]

skipping around some podcasts the other day, I came across an interview with lois lowry.

all I could recall was "A Summer to Die", a book I loved in pre-adolesence almost as much as "Life Without Friends"

In "A Summer to Die," the sister of the protagonist becomes ill and as a result suffers severe nosebleeds. I remember reading about those nosebleeds like it was yesterday. how the sisters slept in the same room and once, the sister awoke in the middle of the night to gushing blood. the parents race into the room and they couldn't get the bleeding to stop. 

I read this book in the late eighties/early nineties, probably, but I don't need to look any of this up to confirm what I recall. I know these memories to be true.

I remember what I felt.

which only made it more devastating to read in lois lowry's biography that she did in fact have a sister, who was sick, who had nosebleeds, and died. and the entire book had been based on the loss of her sister. 

what had affected me so deeply in fiction had actually happened in real life.

then I read further down, as lowry described her writing:

My books have varied in content and style. Yet it seems that all of them deal, essentially, with the same general theme: the importance of human connections.