Brekkie at London Heathrow

Victoria Station

London Paddington to Carmarthen via Swansea

copycats:

“All My Friends” by Tokyo Police Club

Originally by LCD Soundsystem

perfectmidnightworld:

I can’t imagine anyone is going to argue that this cover is better than the original, but it’s a fun take on a perfect song. So here goes Tokyo Police Club with their 2007 entry into their 10 Covers/ 10 Years/ 10 Days project. The melancholy is gone, and it’s transformed into more of a rocking affair, but it’s still solid and worth a listen. Be sure to check out the Tokyo Police Club Soundcloud page to keep up with their 10 Covers/ 10 Years/ 10 Days project. 

(subscribe) Tokyo Police Club @ Soundcloud

A few rough shots from today’s garlicky adventures with my little nephew:

Halfway to a heart attack just looking at this…

I opted out and went searching instead for garlic beer, which I sadly didn’t find.

Practicin my smile for the ladies…

“See?! My tooth is wobbly too!”

Damien Jurado - Everything Trying

getting ready to disconnect…

I am, by nature, an instant-gratification kind of person.

I wish it weren’t so. I wish I were a patient person who internalizes the fact that most good things take time. But like many people, I am drawn to quick fixes and quick results. I once wrote a 50,000 word manuscript for a novel in 30 days. Now that was a saga in and of itself, a brisk race of word count against time for a whole month. Not to trivialize this experience, which I am quite proud of despite the horrific prose, but I can’t help but think that it says something about me that I try to cram things into ridiculously short amounts of time. I did end up with a cathartic, 175-page-ish piece of fei-oo that I valued much more for the experience than the actual end product.

(Although if I had a nickel for every time my little sister exclaimed, “This is so poo!” during that month, I might have enough money to buy a PBR in the Mission. She and I have both tacitly agreed to never speak of our respective manuscripts again, much like that episode of Star Trek Voyager, where Captain Janeway and Tom Paris turn into amphibians when their shuttle reached Warp 10 and then proceed to hook up and produce mutant offspring.)

But I digress…

Next Monday is my last day at work before I take off for a 3 month leave of absence. I realized that I haven’t had a break this long without obligations since I was 12. It explains why my life, at equilibrium, always gravitates toward being busy. People tell me that they would go crazy if they had nothing to do for 3 weeks let alone 3 months, to which I always think: I wish that were the case with me. But that never happens.

Instead of following my natural tendency to constantly do more stuff, I am embarking on a Vipassana meditation retreat to kick start my leave of absence. I’ll be up in Yosemite, radio silent for 10 days since there will obviously be no laptops, cell phones, or even journals allowed. As a matter of fact, I will be literally silent, since Noble Silence is required from all of the students. In true Nhu-style, I am taking “doing nothing” to the extreme. I make it look hard. 

I won’t lie; this sounds neither fun nor relaxing. But I am strangely excited about it. I am an escapist by nature. Over the past year and a half, I can recount a laundry list of places I have been (6 different countries — unless you count Kingsville, TX, which really should qualify as a separate country) and things I have done. I am grateful for most of these things, which have enriched my life and stretched me as a person but I can’t deny that many of them were motivated by a reaction to stress and disappointment in my life. In all honesty, at my core, I still feel alone and lost and scared. When I really think about it, it’s not surprising that a year and a half of running and avoiding has done little to change this. 

This meditation retreat is something that has been on my mind for years, but I could never bring myself to commit to it. For what it’s trying to do, 10 days isn’t a lot of time, but when I think about it, being stuck with nothing but yourself, your issues and a cushion for 10-12 hours a day for 10 days straight is daunting. I am both terrified and excited at the prospect of finally facing up to it and seeing where it leads me.

andrewharlow:

by Vincent Pacheco

Exactly how I felt 10 years ago. Times change.

(Source: andrewharlow, via quote-book)