Isabel

16

Hi

I like fashion. But not in an Oh-I'm-fashionable way, which I really am not. But I like fashion--fashion photos, designers, models... All of them, but especially models.

I adore reading. Let's not go there.

And music, but I'm a music sponge, not a music hero (I don't go on music quests; I absorb what those around me quested for).

I'm an internet and TV junkie.

And, more than anything, a book junkie. Call it what you will--nerdiness, escapism, compulsion--but I cannot now nor will I ever be able to really express my love for books, nor satisfy my need for them.

I adore poast-apocalyptic stories because I find them supremely uplifting: the apocalypse happened. Humans still appear to be alive. And I am very much frightened of death and the end of things, because, as George R. R. Martin tells us, "death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities."

I hate elitism and nostalgia, but particularly nostalgia--all-consuming, heavy, overfull, and painful. I love sarcasm and anything epic--epic is great. Epic makes you feel like DOING, like ACTING ON IT, and it makes your eyes shine and it lends you a weird sense of importance. Epic is good and necessary. I love romance. I have no issues with cliche if said cliche is still engrossing, still well-written. I once had an english teacher that said something about how there are really only a certain number--a very limited one, I might add--of plots, of stories for people to write, but that that isn't the point: the point is the characters and their relationships with one another.

I am afraid of dying. I want to finish it all before I die, and I've barely begun any of it.

I almost completely lack the ability to 'stick with it.'

I'm probably extraordinarily average, but I don't care, because I'm too busy being wrapped up in my life and my friends and my family to notice.

I also love quotes.

". . . in the end, a man turns into what he thinks he is, however large or small. It is the reason why certain people are prone to colds and catastrophe. And why others can dance on water."

--Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics

"We do not love anything more deeply than we love a story. . ."

--Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

"We can know a lot. And still, no doubt, there are rash and wonderful ideas brewing somewhere; there are many surprises yet to come."

--Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

"Okay. This is what good guys do. They keep trying. They don’t give up."

--Cormac McCarthy, The Road

There are things you do because they feel right and they may make no sense and they may make no money and it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other and to eat each other's cooking and say it was good.--Brian Andreas

Most people don't know
there are angels
whose only job is to make sure
you don't get too comfortable
and fall asleep and miss your life.--Brian Andreas

Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life.--Brian Andreas

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.--Roald Dahl

John Galt: What have you got to offer me that I couldn’t get without you?

Mr. Thompson: Without me, you couldn’t get out of this room, right now.

John Galt: True.

Mr. Thompson: Well, don’t you see? What I’ve got to offer you is your life.

John Galt: It’s not yours to offer, Mr. Thompson.

--Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.”--Leonard Cohen, Anthem

And my favorite poem of ALL TIME:

The Passing Strange

--John Masefield

Out of the earth to rest or range
Perpetual in perpetual change,
The unknown passing through the strange.

Water and saltness held together
To tread the dust and stand the weather,
And plough the field and stretch the tether,

To pass the wine-cup and be witty,
Water the sands and build the city,
Slaughter like devils and have pity,

Be red with rage and pale with lust,
Make beauty come, make peace, make trust,
Water and saltness mixed with dust;

Drive over earth, swim under sea,
Fly in the eagle’s secrecy,
Guess where the hidden comets be;

Know all the deathly seeds that still
Queen Helen’s beauty, Caesar’s will,
And slay them even as they kill;

Fashion an altar for a rood,
Defile a continent with blood,
And watch a brother starve for food:

Love like a madman, shaking, blind,
Till self is burnt into a kind
Possession of another mind;

Brood upon beauty, till the grace
Of beauty with the holy face
Brings peace into the bitter place;

Prove in the lifeless granites, scan
The stars for hope, for guide, for plan;
Live as a woman or a man;

Fasten to lover or to friend,
Until the heart break at the end:
The break of death that cannot mend;

Then to lie useless, helpless, still,
Down in the earth, in dark, to fill
The roots of grass or daffodil.

Down in the earth, in dark, alone,
A mockery of the ghost in bone,
The strangeness, passing the unknown.

Time will go by, that outlasts clocks,
Dawn in the thorps will rouse the cocks,
Sunset be glory on the rocks:

But it, the thing, will never heed
Even the rootling from the seed
Thrusting to suck it for its need.

Since moons decay and suns decline,
How else should end this life of mine?
Water and saltness are not wine.

But in the darkest hour of night,
When even the foxes peer for sight,
The byre-cock crows; he feels the light.

So, in this water mixed with dust,
The byre-cock spirit crows from trust
That death will change because it must;

For all things change, the darkness changes,
The wandering spirits change their ranges,
The corn is gathered to the granges.

The corn is sown again, it grows;
The stars burn out, the darkness goes;
The rhythms change, they do not close.

They change, and we, who pass like foam,
Like dust blown through the streets of Rome,
Change ever, too; we have no home,

Only a beauty, only a power,
Sad in the fruit, bright in the flower,
Endlessly erring for its hour,

But gathering, as we stray, a sense
Of Life, so lovely and intense,
It lingers when we wander hence,

That those who follow feel behind
Their backs, when all before is blind,
Our joy, a rampart to the mind.