quote of the day - William Saroyan

“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough”

- - William Saroyan

abbreviated summer to-do list

Originally uploaded by jillard

- write a zine
- swim in the beach every (nice) day after my internship or work
- learn some guitar
- learn how to sew from mommy
- dream up the most excellent tattoo that i may or may not ever get the nerve to get
- bonfires, nostalgia, dreaming
- as many music shows as humanly and financially possible
- continue to save money for next semester and most importantly the semester after that: FRANCE!

yesterday my mom showed me her 1950's-era sewing machine she picked up for free from a friend. although i had some machine sewing experience whilst constructing Rainbow Trout (a fish pillow with a rainbow on it) in the seventh grade, she reminded me how to do things. i sewed a single line down the piece of scrap fabric she had and i wished creating things came easier. and i felt proud of her, for making her own clothes in the seventies (that she, unfortunately, did not save for me to wear!) and continuing to make things through years of repressed housewifery and divorce and online-date boyfriends. instead of feeling exasperated i was happy to be there. i wished it was a skill i had mastered years ago.