I guess I'll have to learn to love shrimp now

A few months ago, I wrote this post, not knowing where I’d be next year. Well I still don’t know which bed I’ll be sleeping in, but I do know the country. After a year of trying to be in Southeast Asia, I just about gave up hope and graduated about a month and a half ago without any prospect of a job or relocation. However, an unforeseen job opportunity arose a few weeks ago and, in possibly the most rash decision of my life, I decided to take it. So here I am, preparing to move to Singapore tomorrow and start work next week. I wobble between extreme excitement and nervousness every ten minutes.

I have a lot of goals for myself for the coming months, one of which is to write. To write on this blog, to write creatively, to write privately and to write to friends and family. I’m hoping to visit all these coffee shops, sit down with kopi and write everything I’m seeing and learning.

Singapore has been a country I’ve visited countless times but never lived in. It has been one of my deepest regrets, having gone almost every summer growing up but too young and naïve to care. I always complained about leaving my dad for too long, about the heat, about the lack of spaghetti and burgers, about Singlish. I’m so happy to have a second chance, to see the same country through different eyes -- older and hopefully slightly wiser eyes.

While I am not a fan of Ted Hughes (because of his moral choices not his writing), I can’t help but love his encouragement to his son, “As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you.”

Illustration by my sister, Lauren Monaco.

Oh this heavy heart is missing you around

This following seemed like an apt thought to describe the current and upcoming post grad life.

Post title from from My Live, My Love by Family and Friends, a lovely band I saw in Chicago last weekend.

Curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us 

something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. 

Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight 

or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

e. e. cummings

Photo by rose & crown.

Where the lights don't move and the colors don't fade

The southwest corner of Foster and Orrington. I hated that one corner during the wintertime. Those darn students renting that house never ever shoveled and it left a build up of ice looming in front of the sidewalk. Actually I preferred when it was frozen because then my feet didn’t get wet. Every single time I needed to go anywhere I had to cross that stretch of ice/slush. I'd do anything to avoid it, walking on the ice around it or crossing the street a good amount to avoid shoe damage.

Last week when I left my college apartment for the last time, I realized that the ice puddle wasn’t there anymore. It hadn’t been there for a long time. That one corner, the bane of my existence in the winter, had slowly returned to concrete and grass. Yet I hadn’t given it a second thought when the snow was melting. I’d forgotten to be thankful for the easy walking that warmer weather had brought.

Lying in bed in my old room. Post title from Stay Alive by José González.

I watched as the clouds began to part

I had a plant named Marzipan for a few months, but then it died. The plant looked nice against my green walls with all the maps and postcards and photographs. It sat on my desk where I sit and do homework and eat an inordinate amount of dark chocolate berries. My window is right next to my desk; it doesn't lock but it is often open, bringing air from the alleyway.

Last year at this time I slept in a red room filled with photos and antiques that weren't mine with a small window overlooking a garden. There was a table at the foot of my bed that displayed a train of small elephants. I would always knock the little one down by accident when I moved around the room in the morning, but it never broke.

I wonder what space I'll inhabit next year at this time.

Just some thoughts.








Photography by Kate Chausse and post title from Isaac by Bears Den.