Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.
I Know What You Think of Me - NYTimes.com (via sociolab)

(via dalasverdugo)

Source: The New York Times

Love is… (Or the speech I gave at my brother’s wedding)

Love is patient, love is kind, love is the glue that holds two people together.

When I was in college, I had a theory that I thought could change the world. What if gravity, the elusively massive force that holds our universe together was actually just love. What if, instead of mass and dark matter exerting this force, it was actually just an immense outpouring of attraction and togetherness that was keeping our universe in balance?

It was then that I realized I was smoking too much pot.

What remained though, was this notion that the greatest force in the universe was the love two people can have for each other.

Love is the sound of that person’s voice piercing through the din of a crowded coffee shop or restaurant that makes your ears stand up and your face curl into a smile.

Love is the stupid laughter you share about the way that pesky tuft of hair above your right eye just will not seem to lay down flat. In time that tuft of hair has a name like Randy or Wilbert and part of the morning conversation is a series of inside jokes about Randy being such a flipping jerk for not lying down flat that morning. Randy’s awake, you say, or Randy’s up and at ‘em, or Randy’s at full attention, or Randy just will not go down.

Of course Randy could be the name of something else too but I digress.

There’s a moment you know you’re in love, it’s when the eyes widen and the pulse quickens and for at least a month after, you wish you could just get this certain person off your mind because he or she is making it incredibly hard just to “play it cool” and “let it happen”

Love is the thing that makes you feverishly spend an hour and a half cleaning your disgusting bathroom because a certain someone texted you this afternoon and there’s the off chance that they might be coming over tonight, you can’t be sure, but there’s the chance, and for that you’ll do anything.

Love is the thing that makes you work as hard as you can at your dead-end job on the chance that you’ll be promoted to manager and then someday CEO just so you can show that certain someone that you have something to be proud of.

Love is the reason you’d move across the country to a suburb of some crowded, dirty city where the people don’t engage in eye contact, where as far the eye can see there are people living their lives as artists or stock brokers, senators or street people without giving a second thought to the thoughts, feelings and ideas that course through your mind at a dizzying pace. Where rent for a studio apartment is two thousand a month and the most you make at your job for a twenty-something online gossip blog is much, much, much less than that. All that matters though, is that the two of you are together.

Love is the thing that makes you buy art you hate, twenty pillows for a guest bed that will never be used, actual cups and plates and silverware instead of the plastic stuff you got at target eight years ago that has held up surprisingly well, and a turkey baster and thermometer that will sit in the drawer lamenting their underuse, only to see the light of day come a cold November afternoon, but that’s ok because, you will do anything for this certain person.

Love is the thing that makes you wear shoes instead of flip flops, an oxford instead of a hoodie and 80 dollar khakis instead of the dirty jeans that get washed, at most, 4 times a year, but you don’t mind because if it means you get to see that certain someone’s face after a long day you will wear a leotard and a sombrero all day everyday until the end of time.

Love is the thing that makes you sign up for an online dating site because you hate going to bars, you work too much, your friends have all paired up, and at this point in your life, you think, hell, the internet might work if it means that you don’t die a slow death as a lonely hoarder cat lady, I’m looking at you Geoff.

Love is also dirty, it’s the core knowledge that whatever horrible things happened in your past and whatever the next day will bring, you will still have that certain person by your side.

Love is the immense, the immaculate, the incredible. It is, essentially the unquantifiable, unable to be measured thing that eats at us. It’s illusive, but it’s also definitely there.

Some fall into it too quick and lose themselves, others ease into it slowly after years of casual friendship.

Whatever it is though, it takes work, it takes vulnerability, and it takes time, and whether it holds the universe together or not, it is most certainly a force we all have to pay attention to.

Geoff and Lindsey, you have that love.

It’s something that’s eluded me in the last 27 years but looking at you guys gives me hope that there’s someone out there, maybe on match.com that will be that certain person for me.

Geoff, You’re awesome. I’ve looked up to you as a role model since before I can remember and you’ve been a damn good one.

Lindsay, you’re just as awesome and Geoff deserves a woman as good as you. I’m proud to call you my new sister.

Now go be awesome together and live happily ever after.

Cheers.

But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For awhile these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (via beermethatquote)