#genobisconte

[janeitsurelookslikerain-blog]

Here in these deep city lights Girl could get lost tonight I'm finding every reason to be gone There's nothing here to hold on to Could i hold you?      -Sara Bareilles I pray that someday you are so in love with someone it takes away any doubt you ever had about past lovers. I pray that someday you are so connected to someone that no matter where you are, or what you're doing, you go to them when they call for you because--whether your body goes or not-- your heart leaped out of your chest and went to them the moment you heard their voice a half note off the perfect pitch that sings in your ear every time you hear it.. I pray you meet someone who, when you look in their eyes, you see your children... and if you look deeply enough... your children's children... and they are amazingly as beautiful as the eyes you're looking into... maybe even more beautiful. And I pray that  you are willing to have your heart shattered into a million pieces hoping this person someday remembers seeing that same person in you.              -Anonymous I love this song so much and it is so fitting that i could put the above quote with it because I think this may be the most amazing love song ever written to a city. Sure people write songs about specific cities but i love how Sara has written just a passionate song to any city-any place we live and fall in love with like a person. And the longer we reside in that place, the more it becomes exactly that-a relationship filled with ups and downs.  A place we share moments of absolute passion and amazement as much as moments where want to nothing more to leave it and forget it ever happened certain that any new place can only nbe better. I have lived here in New York City-Brooklyn to be specific-for over thirteen incredibly amazing and anguished, exhilarating, and exhausting, and fantastic and fretful years now, and I have some of the most amazing precious moments that have snuck up on me that I will put side by side with any of my relationships with lovers and family just as i have had moments of frustration that have made me question what ever drew me to this city, made me curse the moments I left the safety of Wilmington, Delaware for something bigger, more exciting, and outside of my comfort zone.  I have had flings with other cities-dabbled with thoughts of moving to Philadelphia, Park City, Utah, and even Anchorage Alaska at one point, but I always come back.  New York knows she is my love so I suppose she allows for these dalliances knowing she can get away with it, or maybe she just knows she's what's best for me at this point in my if and when, if ever it is time for me to go she will most certainly let me walk away, always knowing she was the one I will always love most, knowing I am thinking of the beautiful curves of her steely skyline even though my eyes lavish on the majestic beauty of a beach at sunset or the simple serenity of a snow-capped mountain.

She will know it's my true love that i am thinking of because of all we have shared that no one can take from us--because a city is a place we live in the world just as in our hearts. It is where we reside, it is where we exist I suppose just need to get these words out of my head, a head that has rested and resided in the same city and the same heart for over a decade now. And this morning i stumbled upon a a piece i wrote back in February 13 of this year and all I can ask when i read it is whether living here is me holding on for something i have convinced myself i am so close to…  or if I am just holding myself back. Regardless I suppose I just put all these letters, all these words between the opening quotes to make you read all the way down so I can tell you the Anonymous piece above was of course that aforementioned piece that i wrote back in February…

But if the words written by someone are never spoken to the person for whom they were intended, they belong to no one.

-G

[janeitsurelookslikerain-blog]

Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe--a spirit vastly superior to that of man's      - Albert Einstein He's everything you want He's everything you need He's everything inside of you That you wish you could be He says all the right things At exactly the right time But he means nothing to you And you don't know why       -Vertical Horizon Someone asked me what I gave up for lent the other day and while I fumbled with a dozen different things that I know i will half ass over the course of the next 40 days, it's amazing what my brain typed out... "DOUBTING MYSELF" I came through me from a much smarter, clearer place than my brain but as i saw it spelled out i realized that whoever said it was right.  I have been doing  that far too long  and confusing it for what I thought was being humble.  I wasn't humble I was foolish.  But now I take what is mine and help everyone else enjoy what is theirs. And while i don't know exactly what it means now, I am certain it will make sense as I look back on this in a few hours days and years. But first I want to apologize and by that I mean to me, to the person inside me that I told that, if I wanted to, I could easily write a blog like this every day (let alone once a week)  if I just had faith that 99% of it all was just coming to the page, literally JUST SHOWING UP.  But like all of is in our less than flattering moments, over the past SIX (hashtag ughh) Tuesdays I found ways to talk myself out of it before even showing up.  It's like going to the gym, or any other good habit, 99% of it is literally just showing up and once you are there, you really have no option but to follow through on the reason you came.  And to be honest, once you are there I know we all will agree that the final 1% is easy. I honestly believe any of us can do anything we genuinely want to do, all we need is passion enough to do it and that passion comes from simply loving what you're doing and how it makes you feel.  I believe if we are driven by anything less than that we will find a way to talk ourselves out off the simplest things, and you can imagine how that prepares us for the the greater challenges that always lie over the horizon. I need to remind myself today of nothing more than that--that these pages are my raw emotion, things that I am passionate about, nothing more than what I am thinking and where my head is going in this blessed moment, so how can they be anything less than perfect? So today I tell my myself--and you since you're still listening--to stop talking yourself out of shit.  Stop coming up with 19 reasons not to do something when the ONE and ONLY reason that matters is because you WANT to do it and someone as AWESOME as you wouldn't do something that isn't correct, beautiful,  or anything less than perfect--because those are the three things that each and everyone of us are are.  Oh you want me to prove it? Fine, just look at any child ever born into this world. None of us would dare argue they are precisely those three things... just as we were... until we started doubting ourselves as being anything less.  SO STOP IT. Please, please, please, just stop it because it is this thinking that paralyzes us, keeps us from acting, from showing up and, in doing so, showing off, our perfect selves.

I have come to learn that doing is what makes this life worth living.  I honestly believe when we chose to come into this world, when we were wherever we were before this, when the energy that is our soul or whatever you want to call it (so long as you don't waste your time trying to convince me that there isn't something ethereal that lives outside the body forever); whatever it was that chose that body, that gorgeous, perfect, vessel you're in; it chose to come here because it knew there were some things that a disembodied spirit couldn't do. It couldn't feel the touch of a loved one, sense the burning passion you feel in your heart when you steal the world's most perfect kiss, couldn't taste those lips or that cup of morning coffee, and certainly couldn't hear your niece scream 'Uncle Geno" this past weekend as you surprised her at dinner with flowers, or for that matter see the huge smile on your nephew's face laughing as both you and he drove his father crazy.

  I could go on but this is my list, and maybe it's time I close here and let you move passionately forward with your own. No need to start big as the things that stand out when you look back at your life may be milestones but I promise you none of them are worth anything if you don't learn to enjoy the little things in every moment of every day.

And one last piece of simple advice for the next time any of us get stuck...

The closing stanza from my mother's favorite poem, Lord Alfred Tennyson's Psalm of Life but feel free to read the whole thing. <3

"Let us be then up and doing With a heart for any fate Still achieving, still pursuing Learn to labor and to wait" xoxo      -g