"So therefore I dedicate myself to myself, to my art, my sleep, my dreams, my labors, my sufferances  my loneliness, my unique madness, my endless absorption and hunger-because I cannot dedicate myself to any fellow being." - Kerouac

I want my very own Gomez.

Taxidermy, carnivorous plants, hands with minds of their own, hairy cousins, a surprisingly functional family, black roses, Morticia, Wednesday, and an adorably lanky butler. It's no wonder why The Addams Family was always one of my favorites. And Gomez Addams? What a man. 

The slicked back hair and the tackily suave striped suits. 

The carefree attitude and the hyperactive sex drive.

The affectionate nature and constant jokes.

The hungry eyes and that classic stache.

With a Gomez, every night would be Halloween.

What's the worst that could happen if I installed a window box outside of my apartment window...?

-A drunk college student pulls it down.

-I pay a fine.

-I get arrested?

-It falls off and kills someone walking underneath it...?

Hmmm...

16.3

I can't handle this.

This guy is sixteen years and three months old today. I don't usually notice the months when thinking about ages but, man. Of course, I've known it for a while. I think that it is just now hitting me that he is 6'3 and 243 lbs and not a kid anymore. 

It seems like it was just yesterday that I was holding him by his shirt tail in Disney World. In every single picture, my scrawny eleven year old arms are grasping his seven year old body in some way. I did the same thing with my older brother.  (I worried a little too much as a kid. Ha.)

I miss the days of singing "Going on a Bear Hunt" and some song about Pizza Hut and other fast-food chains that he taught me. I miss that day when we first heard him count to ten in a language that we had never heard of. I miss the day when we learned that he doesn't like when things have holes in them. I miss the day when he came to me with a broken sculpture in his hands and said, "It's okay. I'll fix it. Tape it." I miss the day when I was laying in bed and he brought me a huge bowl of cold spaghetti and said, "Mmm... smell. Smells good!" (His way of showing me that he had it/seeking my approval). I miss the Christmas when he started draping clean laundry on the Christmas tree while we were decorating it. I miss his routines. I miss the way that we squint and rub our noses against each others'. I miss him putting his hand on my forehead as if I am peering out into the distance. I miss that he won't remove his hand until I open my eyes widely. I miss the way he doesn't step over things, but instead walks around them or jumps over them. I miss when he would sit at the top of the stairs and ask me to sit at the bottom while we tossed toys back and forth until the day that we broke the light in the stairwell. (We stared at each other, gaping mouths... I cleaned up the glass and we kept playing.) I miss when he would sit in my bedroom floor while I sat on my bed and we would pelt each other with stuffed animals. Occasionally, I would refrain from throwing them until I had accumulated a large amount, and then throw them one by one but at machine gun-like speed. That made him laugh. I miss his chuckles and the way that he makes himself crack up and how you can hear it when you're on the other side of the house. I miss having his marble-rolling contraptions strewn throughout the floor. I miss his bright blue eyes and the way that he tucks his hand under his chin while he sleeps. Despite being on the more moderate to severe end of the autism spectrum, he is a typical sixteen year old. With sixteen comes mood swing and many other glorious things that I'm sure my parents are overjoyed to have in their houses again. His understanding for pulleys and levers is pretty impressive and he enjoys building ramps and slopes for marbles and cars. He can figure out how to do pretty much anything on a computer. He is very good at math. He can memorize movie scenes and scenes from shows very quickly. He loves Just Dance, Angry Birds, Mario, Zelda, Toy Story, hot air balloons, and when people laugh and sneeze. 

I'm going home this weekend and I can't wait to see him.  My parents want me to surprise him by being the one to pick him up from the YMCA and I can't wait to. When I do this, he turns to his friends and sort of pushes his bottom half back while leaning forward, and points to me in a silly way while smiling and lifting his eyebrows. Apparently, they've started doing some serious workouts at school because my dad said that his arms are very muscular. This means that that hug that he is going to give me... the already lung-bursting, bone-crushing hug is going to be ten times tighter and I'm okay with this. 

I couldn't be happier.

"If he is not the word of God, God never spoke."

"Glass with Roses"

Vincent van Gogh 1886

I once wrote a post that related a time in my life to a painting by van Gogh. 

This is another one of those.

Dim.

In a week, my older brother is going to China to teach for around a year and no one knows exactly how to handle it. I don't think he even knows. My whole family is filled with adventurers who are up for pretty much anything if they are sure that it won't put them in jail. But despite that, none of us know how to handle this. He has always been there. He stayed in Florence and went to college at UNA. He has been flying all over the world for the past several years but never has he been gone for more than five months. Now, we don't know when we will see him again. As strong as he is, his frequent bouts of nostalgia make him homesick and we all know that this will be just as hard on him as it is for us. He will have a wonderful time. The cherry blossoms will be blooming and everyone in China thinks that he must be an American celebrity because of his golden-brown, curly locks. I'm sure that he will be okay and that all of us will be, too.

When I wake up, things will be different. I have let go. I have released. 

I will pick up and I will move forward. I will no longer be held in one place. No more will I yearn for the unattainable. I will stop kicking the same bruise from life over and over and over. I will let it heal and I will be stronger. The light in my eyes will come back and my smile will be 100% bona fide. 

This is it. 

Game on. Let's play ball.

"So you plant your own garden and
decorate your own soul, instead of waiting
for someone to bring you flowers ."

Veronica A Shofstall

-Dana Tanamachi

"I went on a date last night and then you texted and asked, again, whether I would come there. Start our days with coffee, end with you making dinner. Forever. I feel myself tug towards yes and then I remember why it will always be no with you and I.

There are people in your life who are going to love you for all of the wrong reasons. They will love you for the best part of your face, the best part of you naked, the best mood on your best day, the best story you ever wrote, the best outfit you ever wore.

They are going to miss the scar on the underside of your nose from the time your older brothers dared you to run across a pile of logs. They won’t know that you fell on a hidden nail just as you completed the challenge. They’ll miss the scar on your finger, too from the time you were seven and closed a swiss army knife on it. They won’t understand that these are two of only a handful of things you can remember about your childhood. They’ll notice that you have great tits, but they’ll miss that your thumb tucks into their palm when you’re walking together and that your eyes have darker circles when a migraine is coming. They won’t know you get migraines. They won’t ask where the story you wrote came from, so they’ll never know that it was true. They’ll love it because it feels real to them. They’ll miss knowing the sweatshirt full of holes that they criticized you for wearing was your dads. You might tell them some of these things along the way, but they will remember the best things instead.

They will love your good moods, your energy, your sense of humor, but miss that you never turn to them, but rather to a shower or a pillow or the back of your throat to shed tears. They won’t ever consider you strong.

When the parts that aren’t your best come out, some people will shield their eyes as if you have just forced them to look directly into the sun for hours until their irises burn. They’ll silently make you promise to never show them that again. Those things are not to be shown. Be at your best so I can love you. I would love you more if only you never show me those things.

And you do not marry those people. You do not sit and sleepily drink coffee with those people. You leave those people and you remind yourself that they missed the better parts of you."

-Tumblr

There isn't a lot that I can say about this year's Valentine's day. It was pretty awful until I got a call from the one and only Shelby Ingram and learned that she had goodies for me! We ended up meeting at my apartment and chowed down on Chick fil a, red velvet cupcakes, and chocolate-covered strawberries while we reminisced about people in the past from our high-school.

Then we remembered that we had been each other's Valentine before. In 2011, I spent my Valentine's day in Auburn. We rang in V-day by making chocolate-covered strawberries and devouring an entire platter of them in two days. Next thing we know, it's happening again and it was even better than the first time.  

Thank you, Shelby for showering me with goodies and for being you. I can't wait to see more of you!

Thanks again, Mirandal.

Pilgrimage Planning

For a really long time, I've been wanting to buy MegaBus tickets and go visit some art galleries across the U.S. 

 This is a small list of where I need to go in New York City.

Gagosian Gallery in New York City.

Currently has works by Basquiat, Marden, Gehry, Picasso and others.

Soon it will have works by Rauschenberg and others.

Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Currently has works by Munch (The Scream until April 29), Pollock, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Hesse, Van Gogh, Kahlo and others.

Soon it will have works by O'Keeffe, Wyeth, and others.

Guggeheim Museum in New York City

Currently has works by Kandinsky (until April 17), Cezanne, Pissarro,  Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh and others.

Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City

Currently has works by Matisse, Klee, Rembrandt, Botticelli, Warhol, Pollock, Rauschenberg, Cassatt, Jasper Johns and others.

Soon it will have works by Manet, Monet, Baudelaire, Homer, and others.

That was just me hitting the high points in New York. The world is my oyster.

Happy birthday, Mr. Lincoln.

 Abraham Lincoln

February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865

Fun facts that you already knew:

-Lincoln was 6'4"

-He was the first president to have a beard while in office.

-He was the first president to be assassinated.

-Abe bought and ran a store at the age of twenty-three. This caused him to owe a 1,000 dollar debt. Which he paid back entirely over the span of seventeen years.

-Lincoln carried important papers and letters in his hat.

-His shoe size was 14.

“A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.” 

"The more I paint, the more I like everything."

Jean Michel Basquiat